Saving Mount Carmel Caves: A Cautionary Tale for Archaeology in Our Times

Abstract

On 25 August 1934 Dorothy Garrod closed down her series of excavations over seven seasons in the caves of Wadi el-Mughara (now Nahal Hamearot) in Mount Carmel, the low limestone range running south from Haifa. She had revealed there the longest stratigraphic record in the Near East, today known to span 600,000 years or more of prehistoric human activity (Mercier et al. 1995, Ronen and Tsatskin 1995). The year before this final season, on 31 Ostober 1933, Sir Arthur Wauchope, High Commissioner for Palestine, had declared open the new harbour at Haifa. Palestine, ruled under British Mandate since 1920, now had a first-class deep-water port on its Mediterranean coastline. The link between these two achievments can be seen as a parable for today, a tale of the conflict of interests between the forces of political power and economic advance and the preservation of the past. Seventy years after the drama of the Mount Carmel Caves and the Haifa Harbour Project was played out this conflict has not lessened. Documents preserved in the Public Record Office (PRO) in London and the archives of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) in Jerusalem reveal the extent to which the now famous caves were theatened by the need to quarry building stone for the harbour and how narrowly they escaped destruction. The documents suggest that the caves' survival owes much to a particular fortunate combination of personalities, attitudes and abilities among the officials in place, often at the highest level of British authority, both at home and in Palestine during the crucial year of 1928.